Tag | TFS Posts

*Moved to: Deploying Team ServerSorry that I have not posted on this subject in a while, but I am lazy. After that last elongated post I am in the mood to write again... Our TFS implementation is moving forward. I did a presentation on Friday to my peers and bosses on the need for TFS and the appropriate uses of it. This has all come about as the scope of the project I have been asked to undertake has increased. Instead of 6 developers an 4 project managers, I have been asked to spec for 10 developers ...

Brian Harry talks about his internal TFS management tool. He's really just torturing us, because it's not available for download. Hopefully, he will release this to the salivating public. Technorati tags: Brian Harry, TFS ...

Wow! Exactly what I've been waiting for!! So yesterday Brian Harry blogged about a Server Manager tool he developed on the side and asked us if we taught that was going to be useful as a power tool. Well... Absolutely. Manageability as been...how to say... difficult in V1 with tools like this it will certainly help see if our infrastructure is healthy and how well we do. Those stats will be very important for some of our folks. So I say ... absolutely Brian bring it on. Cheers, ET ...

A while back I replied to a Rob Caron post regarding the connection of a TFS Proxy to a TFS Server in a different domain. Here's the link: http://blogs.msdn.com/robca... So, I am finally getting around to posting the actual Visio diagram for this particular configuration. I can verify that this configuration still works with SP1 of TFS. A few notes: This solution uses local machine accounts, taking advantage of pass-through authentication. While using non-domain accounts ...

As I was trying to import a work item definition into a team project (using the Process Template Editor from gotdotnet) I received the following error message: TF26204: The account you entered is not recognized. Contact your Team Foundation Server administrator to add your account.. But I had not done any security changes (adding account or groups or permissions). What was it taking about? Then I understood: I had added a field that contained backslashes as values and TFS interpreted it as user account! ...

So today an internal Team decided to move to our corporate TFS instance (nothing new there) the crux was that they are running a mix of VB6, VS2003 projects. I say "Hey no problem you guys can use the MSSCCI Provider for TFS and it should work like a charm!" so after our conversation I remembered that I had not tried this at home like they say, I have been using VSTS (2005) and have not worked on a legacy project in a while. So off I go and download the MSSCCI Provider and install it in VM (that ...

When using Visual Studio 2005 to access Team Foundation Server source, you can configure the client to use the TFS Proxy Server. However, on a build server, you don't necessarily have Visual Studio. installed. Further, the setting is per user, so you'd have to log into the box as athe build service account, run Visual Studio, and configure the proxy setting. So here's how you configure the build service to use your TFS Proxy server. Note that you still need to log into the box as the build service ...

In a recent post, I talked about wanting a TFS group called ParaPlan_Stud that contained Kyle and myself that we could assign tasks to and view in our "My Work Items". Much thanks goes to Mickey Gousset, who wrote a book that you need to get, for helping me with this. I originally made this a blog post, but it was a bit lengthy and I didn't want to flood the front page, so I added it to my articles. http://geekswithblogs.net/t... ...

Kyle and I are running into a small problem with Team Foundation Server when it comes to assigning tasks. In a typical software development company, a Project Manager receives a bug or feature request. He then assigns associated tasks to his developers. Once the developer is finished, the task is re-assigned to the PM for review. At EnGraph, things are a bit more collaborative. Partly because of our size, but also because we like to manage support and development from a team perspective. Back to ...

Christoph Wille has developed a Team Foundation Server code check-in policy that checks the pending changeset for ///code comments. This has been a very useful tool for us. It can be downloaded here. Thanks Christoph! Technorati tags: TFS, Check-in policy, code comments, Christoph Wille ...

*Moved to: Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Installation GuideThe TFS guys have just updated the Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Installation Guide to a new version released on 4/1/2007 and it incorporates all of the SP1 updates. I have been browsing the documentation for a while now and the main differences are that the guide now includes SP1 in the install procedures. Another change is that it also includes instructions on installing Reporting Services and Analytical Services on a separate ...

*Moved to: Team System WidgetsI have found a site with a list of many of the applications available for Team System. It seams to be updated regularly and should help with some of the v1 shortcomings of team Foundation Server. http://accentient.com/widge... more...Follow my new blog on http://blog.hinshelwood.com ...

When migrating our TFS from a workgroup based install to Active Directory, we got a couple errors when running Team Build. Access to the path 'C:\...BuildLog.txt' is denied To fix this error, I simply deleted the root Team Project folders in Windows Explorer and re-ran the build. The build then recreated the folders. You may have to run the builds in a specific order if your solutions reference assemblies that live in these folders. The other error occurred after a build started: TF42004: Team Build ...

Moving our TFS Server to Active Directory wasn't that bad. I followed these instructions from MSDN. They are meant for people moving from one domain to another. But the steps worked for moving from a TFS workgroup based install to a domain based install. All of the tasks that were assigned to Kyle or myself were migrated over to our new domain usernames and using this handy permissions tool, I was able to get all of our permissions set correctly. The only problem is initiating a build. When I right ...

I added my main workstation to our new Active Directory domain last night with out a hitch. This morning, I added my Vista laptop and ran into a bit of a problem. So I added a DNS role to the server and was able to add the laptop to the domain. Then we started in on Kyle's laptop. When attempting to log on, we got "The system cannot log you on now because the domain engraph is not available". After much googling, I discovered that the DNS role was incorrectly set up. I thought that just removing ...

Today I get to learn how to change a Team Foundation Server from a workgroup based install to a domain based install. We've had Active Directory for a while, but it was never set up right. Thanks to Robert Oderkirk at Free State Business for helping us figure out what was wrong. So now, we have to attach all of our computers to the domain, set up the network users, and hope that TFS plays nicely with the transition. I need to do more research, but hopefully, I just have to switch the TFS accounts ...

So Howard tagged me yesterday ;-). I met Howard at Microsoft a few months back working on the OD for TFS. Here goes 5 things few people know about me ... 1. Today is my birthday... I'm old ... but I'm still barely clinging to my 30s. 2. I used to play football when I was ... younger ;-). I had to stop because I broke my tibia (that's the big bone on the lower part of the leg) and was 6 months in various casts and it was never the same after. Oh and did I mention it was touch football ;-). I still ...

*Moved to: Deploying Team ServerLoads more fun with the deployment, but we now have a plan... We are going to to have 3 sets of servers for out TFS implementation, (DEV | QA / CNR | Prod). The triples the cost, but allows us to have a fail over server if the live goes down and a dev box for testing service packs and and custom components or process flows we create. The costs do not stop there however. On the server side we need SAN storage for the production box and on the client side we need developer ...

Well... it's been a pretty crazy year! here are a few of the highlights ... around the world (literally) in 65 days, 8 countries, 100,000 air miles, speaker at Devteach for the second year in a row, VSTS MVP for the second year in a row, speaker at the first Montreal Code camp, 15 year at EDS and last but probably the best, 20th year with my lovely wife. I don't know where I would be without her... pfeeeww ;-) man I'm tired after reading this again. So what does next year look like... Well I'll probably ...

We were supposed to get Visual Studio Team Edition for Developers in the mail by the 20th of this month (Dec 06). It still hasn't come and I don't see it on MSDN. Time to get back on the phone with Microsoft. Technorati tags: VSTS, Tired of waiting ...

What is reference data? Typically by reference data we mean an attribute of an object within a system that is restricted to a specific list of values. In integration scenarios when you are passing a message from one system to another these lists of reference data are different between the systems. This means if you have a product type id or value from System A there will usually need to be some kind of mapping required to translate the value or id to an equivalent value that System B will understand. ...

After you apply Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1 to an instance of the TFS Proxy Server, external access to the Proxy web site is denied. This is done with an IP restriction on the Team Foundation Server Proxy web site itself. I believe this is related to the pre-SP patch you have to install for quiesing the system, but not sure. Following the application of SP1 to the Proxy, I had to manually remove the IP restriction. Once the restriction was removed everything worked fine again. The symptom ...

*Moved to: Deploying Team ServerGot word from our DBA dept that they will give me my own server for TFS and I can run the install on it, no problem. This seems like the best solution where TFS is concerned. That way I can run Reporting Services on the DB box and negate the extra licence that is required on a separate RS box. It all costs money! Read more...Follow my new blog on http://blog.hinshelwood.com ...

*Moved to: Ahhh, the fun of deploying Team System in a large corporationI can see that this project is going to be fun. I need to deploy team system within the investment bank that I work for. The DBA's will not let me access their servers! And the TFS installation needs to be run on them. However their is a way round this which a nice man called Brian Keller let me in on, thanks Brian.Read more...Follow my new blog on http://blog.hinshelwood.com ...

Whoohoo folks! the long awaited SP for VSTx, Express and TFS is finally out you can get it right here. Also there is a hotfix to apply prior to installing the SP for TFS make sure you read all about it here, essentially it put TFS to "sleep" while patches are installed. There is nothing special to do, just install this hotfix and whenever you apply another hotfix, SP, etc TFS will go to sleep prior to install that's it guys. Happy Patching ET Update: Save some time and space installing the SP by ...

Finally (!) Microsoft strikes back against Apple's hilariously funny "I'm a Mac. I'm a PC." commercials. It's not really a public commercial - more of an internal lampoon - and it's certainly not as sharp as some of the original Apple ads, but it goes to show that at least some people in MS are indeed in touch with reality and care to respond to the hammering they're getting on the web. Sony also jumped into the arena with a small flash banner that you can see on their Sony Australia website. Considering ...

The IIS Admin Service service terminated with service-specific error 2149648394 (0x8021080A). IIS Admin Service goes away after restoring a VHD / VPC Server I recently had the unexpected pleasure of losing my IIS Admin server - altogether!!! Translate - 150% !!! Now, before this - everything was going great - except. During an upgrade of MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) I encounted an issue that forced me to restore a VPC image - essentially bringing over another copy of the VHD and firing ...

I was having problems getting new tasks and build alerts from TFS. I found this post by Vertigo that gave me a great jump start. But, it didn't tell how to authenticate against our SMTP server. Based on a SWAG (Scientific Wild A** Guess), I added smtpPassword and smtpUser keys to the web.config. It worked like a champ and now our web.config in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server\Web Services\Services looks like this: ... <add key="emailNotification... ...

I freaked out this morning because I thought I screwed up our Team Foundation Server by using the TFS Admin tool to modify some permissions. Apparently, you are not supposed to use this tool on non-domain based installs. When I pulled up our source control, right clicking on anything gave an empty menu that said "No commands available". After googling around, I found Grant Holliday's blog, which told me to make sure TFS was set as my default source control provider. Turns out that Vault put itself ...

I've been chin deep in confusion the last week getting EnGraph to be official Certified Partners and installing Team Foundation Server. Luckily for me, there is a lot of good information online so I thought I would post a mini-guide: DO ask lots of questions to your Microsoft rep about becoming certified DON'T freak out when the partner's site opens 15 new Internet Explorer windows DO follow the competencies instructions as close as possible DO worry when you don't hear back from Microsoft after ...

I picked up this book in order to fill an immediate need. I am working on setting up and customizing TFS and this covers about 80% of what I wanted to know. In its pages are covered the installation of all major components, third party tools that are available and customization to fit the way your shop works. I am especially thankful for the section on modifying the process template. I think this would be a good read for most team leads working on the VSTS 2005 platform ...

I recently bought a bigger 80 gig hard drive for my laptop, and wanted to copy the contents of my existing 30 gig disk with an XP install over to it. I didn't want to go buy any drive copying tools or anything else, I just wanted a straightforward and free way to copy everything. I could use the Backup program found in the Accessories / System Tools folder of an XP install to do a backup including the System State, but that would mean finding someplace to temporarily stash a 30 gig backup file. And ...

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the “Feature Of The Week” newsletter. This week, we will revisit a prior Fear Of The Week technology that we discussed in order to show off a cool capability of that technology. If you are a developer wanting to mess around with TxF (Transactional NTFS), you should especially read on :). Did You Know? Did you know that on Vista, Transactional NTFS will work with an NTFS-formatted USB Flash Drive? It’s true! If you want to play around with Transactional NTFS and ...

I am considering picking up a couple of reference books for my team (the company reimbursing me) on VSTS and TFS. I've be looking at a couple, and found some I think would meet my needs. I was wondering if anyone has read them.... They are: Professional Visual Studio 2005 Team System And: Professional Team Foundation Server I was wondering if anyone has looked at these, and what they think. They are Wrox books, and I usually like them pretty well. They tend to be less fluff and more practical manuals. ...

Did someone set the way-back machine for 2001. I am trying to setup up a virtual server with TFS and it feels like I am installing Sharepoint Portal Server 2001. It is so unforgiving that if you miss a step it is hosed and it leaves you little or no way to fix the problem. It expects things the way it wants them and that is that. Of course some will say "just follow the instructions silly", and they would be right to a point. Still, I think application setup tools should be forgiving and make as ...

So I'd like to respond to Urig on his latest post about the Get Latest on Check out. The reason why there isn't a get latest on check is quite simple actually. Let's look at VSS vs. TFS in the lifecycle of a change and see how both fare. Let's start with VSS VSS 1. First thing in the morning, User does a get latest on all the files in the project and compiles to make sure the build is not broken. 2. User does a check-out on the file he wants to work with (and get's the latest of that one file). 3. ...

In a recent post, Leon Langleyben described a Team Foundation Source Control "feature" that is giving users a hard time. The "feature" is that the Check Out command in TFSC no longer performs a Get Latest on the file checked out, as we were accustomed to in VSS. In the older Visual SourceSafe, when you checked out a file VSS would get the latest version of the file to your local machine and only then open the file for you to work on. This is critical when working in Exclusive Checkout Mode, which ...

I have been working on setting up demos of VSTS and TFS on a VPC and Virtual Server. Along the way I have come across a number of snags. Some I have managed to work around. Some I have no answers for. First let me say that I didn't originally install VPC, Virtual Server or their operating systems. My normal machine didn't have enough horses to run these applications so I had our company's admin setup a new machine and install the basics for me. There seemed to be network problems which may be contributing ...

In a previous post I mentioned that I had been trying to use Team Build to get a Continuous Integration environment setup. I recently had the time to return to that task and have managed to get most of what I wanted up and running. I had to jump through a few hoops to get everything working so I'm going to try and describe what I had to do to make everything work right. My solution consists of a WinForms UI, ASP.Net Web Service, 2 Class Libraries, Database project (VSTS DBPro CTP7), Testing project, ...

I have been running Windows Vista RTM since it was released to MSDN a little under a week ago. So far, it has been bliss. Nothing major, or even close to major has made me want to switch back to XP. I have had to make some adjustments, but most have been the fault of those who have not made their software compatible (cough Zune) or who have compatible version coming out shortly. But I digress . . . I filled up my 20 GB C: partition pretty quickly once I migrated all of my data over. And there sat ...

Here's an interesting trick you can do with any Vista DVD. A limited version of this was actually possible back with Win2000 and WinXP. But back then it wasn't really that handy. With the RTM of Vista though it's insanely useful, to the point that I think that every systems guy that's worth his salt should be familiar with this. It allows you to do some excellent troubleshooting with only a Windows Vista DVD. And not just on a Vista machine. You can use this to troubleshoot a copy of XP, Win2K3 Server, ...

For the last few months I have been helping a client adopt Team System - Team Foundation Server. Since these tools are quite new, I will try to keep a log of what I have done. Builds: From MSBuild to TFSBuild The starting situation is an MSBuild script customized for a given team's needs. The default target can execute the following procedure: Delete network share Backup latest build Clean Get latest from source control Increase version and add label in source control if building in Release mode ...

What is BitLocker? Vista has the capability to encrypt your entire disk drive, so if your laptop is stolen, someone can't just pop the hard drive into another computer to get the data. Installing BitLocker is not obvious. It needs to be done when the system is being built and there is no option to check. I am guessing Microsoft was hoping to leave this little secret to the system builders to sell new computers, but that is only a guess. Oh, and you need Ultimate or Enterprise edition, again making ...

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the “Feature Of The Week” newsletter. As mentioned last week, this week we will look at the component that enables new technologies like Transactional NTFS and the Transactional Registry in Vista and Longhorn Server: the Kernel Transaction Manager. What is the Kernel Transaction Manager? The Kernel Transaction Manager (KTM) is a transaction management service. It makes transactions available as kernel objects and provides transaction management services to system ...

Well, the install is complete. Once I got the correct permissions and the access to the correct software, it went pretty smoothly. However, I did run into one issue. During the install I got a 32000 error referring to the STS_CONFIG_TFS database being accessed by stsadm.exe. The exe was being used to configure the Sharepoint database, and was having trouble. I verified that all the pieces/parts existed and made sure the user account for setup was properly configured. All this was fine, so I changed ...

Had a small issue at the shop today with permissions in TFS – one of the things I still occasionally get spun up about is the different ways it handles security between TFS itself, the SharePoint portal and Reporting Services, I mean why can’t it all go based on Active Directory if it’s deployed in a domain environment or Local Groups if deployed in a Workgroup environment? Or am I just being picky? I know I’ve heard before that when Microsoft was rolling this out there was sufficient enough feedback ...